Book Review: The Eye of the World
The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. The Eye of the World is the fantastic first entry in Robert Jordan’s legendary Wheel of Time series.
One of my beta readers for From the Grave of the Gods asked me one day whether I had read the Wheel of Time series. Of course, at that point I had barely heard of it, but he recommended it highly. I also started hearing great things about it from Booktubers such as Daniel Greene. I was intrigued, so I thought I would see what all the fuss was about. And my word, it was excellent.
Summary
Rand al’Thor is a farm boy, a shepherd from the Two Rivers, living a simple life where the greatest excitement he ever experienced was the appearance of the odd travelling merchant or perhaps a gleeman arriving for their annual village festival. When the Two Rivers is attacked by Trollocs, he and four other villagers flee into the night with the help of a mysterious woman and her travelling companion. The world, and even time itself, hangs in the balance, as they embark on an epic quest to prevent the return of the Dark One.
Review
I’d like to start off by saying that this book is one chonky boi. And it was almost off-putting. This is perhaps the longest single book I’ve read. I’ve tried Tolkien, I loved reading The Hobbit, and I love the story of The Lord of the Rings, but I’ve tried to read that three times and DNF’d every time somewhere around the Entmoot! By contrast, I got through The Eye of the World pretty easily. I enjoyed Robert Jordan’s writing style, and the adventure - while clearly heavily inspired by Tolkien - brought a whole bunch of things of its own to the table.
The story itself was a classic tale with chosen ones, dark lords and monsters, following a familiar structure to the end, but it was nonetheless thoroughly enjoyable. The characters were distinctive, relatable, and believable - especially the Emond’s Fielders. Robert Jordan did a brilliant job of getting in close with those to whose viewpoints we were treated. The feelings of terror, discomfort, bewilderment, and of being far outside the comfort zone came across wonderfully, and it all takes a reasonable toll on the characters’ mental states. There are no heroes here, these are sheltered young people plucked from their home and thrust into a deadly world, full of unexpected horrors. We are reminded throughout that this “adventure” is not what the characters expected; it’s nothing like the stories. Stoicism - of the kind we normally find from early-twentieth century medieval fantasy characters - is treated as unusual; the characters who are unfazed by it all are strange and perhaps untrustworthy. After all, who could witness these things and not react? And this makes sense - the Emond’s Fielders have their lives turned upside-down, and none of them want to be there. It goes a long way in giving this fantastical world of magic and monsters grounding and sense of realism.
Then there’s the world that Robert Jordan created - wow! It’s vivid and richly detailed, and made me feel immersed in the environment and part of the story. There’s a depth of history here that is definitely Tolkien-esque, but it is (mostly) delivered in a much more accessible style. The cultures and peoples in the villages, towns and cities fit nicely, and make the places feel lived-in. The descriptions of places convey well the weight of their long histories. And here’s where the prose comes in. Everything flows along smoothly, and the dialogue - while a little sparse sometimes - is believable. Descriptions are full of detail and have a nice rhythm to them that helps with reading - even if it is about the hundredth copse of trees.
There’s a few negatives, of course. No book is perfect, after all, and this is no exception. The beginning of the story takes quite a while to get going. We’re treated to an incredibly thorough tour of the Two Rivers and particularly Emond’s Field. By the time the story really gets going, we know a lot about the area - perhaps a little too much, but it does a good job making you care about it all when things go wrong, and it establishes the characters excellently. There’s clear benefits to it, but at times it does feel like it outstays its welcome a bit.
The story gets going and it’s all exciting and harrowing, and then by the middle of the book, it starts to sag. There’s a lot of trudging from village to village, with mostly the same things happening in each. It’s still captivating and we get some great character moments, but I couldn’t help noticing the repetition. Thankfully it gets exciting again just as our characters reach their penultimate destination.
What is perhaps the biggest sin of the book, however, is the ending. Don’t get me wrong here, this is the start of a 13-book long epic saga, I didn’t expect it all to end here in book one. The ending makes sense in that context and it works, but it didn’t leave me with the same sense of satisfaction as reading the rest of the story did. As I said, a few of our characters reach their penultimate destination on their journey, and there’s great moments inside this big city, until the group is reunited. Then there’s a kind of shift; some quick talking and… suddenly they’ve decided it is of earth-shattering importance that they go somewhere other than the final destination we were expecting them to go to. It reminds me of Brandon Sanderson’s YouTube lecture series where he talks about promise and payoff. It felt like we didn’t quite get the right payoff. From the city, things move very quickly (which is a bit strange because it still takes place over the course of about 20 chapters). They reach their new destination and we’re given a battle against enemies that we’ve never seen before (and who act as though they are arch-nemeses of the heroes), then a quick final showdown with the big bad, and it’s all over. It all feels very rushed; almost shoehorned in, like there was suddenly a deadline that Jordan was writing to and he’d taken too much of his allotted time describing woodland in the preceding forty chapters, and the action was a bit confusing to read. The denouement, however, was very well done and while it didn’t repair the problems with the final showdown, it did get me intrigued to continue reading the series.
Oh, I want to make a quick note about names… They’re a little bit silly. They wear their influence on their sleeve in a way that seemed like they were parodying them. Trollocs (oh, trolls, right? Sort-of, but more bestial), Ba’alzamon (Just straight up Ba’al or Beelzebub), Shai’tan (yep, Satan, very subtle), Ogiers (Sounds like Ogres… kinda look like them too, but more kindly and Entish), and The Green Man (absolutely a Treebeard cameo)… I really tried not to roll my eyes on these. Most other names and characters are fine, but those are the most egregious ones. Oh… except for Lan. It’s not really a spoiler, but we get most of the way through the book before we learn that Lan is short for al’Lan - that one made me laugh out loud and say to my wife, “Hey this guy’s called Alan!”. Much as I like my own name, it’s not a name I would associate with an Aragorn-type character.
Overall a good read. Just like other first books in a series, this does a lot of heavy-lifting lore-wise, and is perhaps a little rough in places, but otherwise pretty solid. There’s a lot to love about this - the characters and world in particular - and I would absolutely recommend this for anyone looking for a Tolkien-inspired world to get lost in.
